Language and Thought: Are they the same? (part 2) ppe#7

October 17, 2018

Dr. Steven Pinker asked the question:”What sense, then, can we make of the suggestion that images, numbers, kinship relations, or logic can be represented in the brain without being couched by words?” (Language Instinct, p. 64) He credits Alan Turing as being the man responsible for making the idea of mental representation, which Pinker calls mentalese, scientifically … More Language and Thought: Are they the same? (part 2) ppe#7

Language and thought: are they the same? ppe#6 (part 1)

October 15, 2018

Immanuel Kant, who said space and time are apriori notions, that is, inside our heads Are language and thought one and the same? Can we only know reality through the medium of language? Donald Fagen, one of the geniuses behind Steely Dan, in his autobiography Elegant Hipsters, traces entire subcultures spawned by Count Korzybski’s General Semantics. … More Language and thought: are they the same? ppe#6 (part 1)

Steven Pinker: Friend or foe of the Enlightenment? ppe log#5 (renamed philosophy, politics, and economics log)

October 11, 2018

Jean-Jacques Rousseau It pains me to write this. This morning my Google news feed included a  review of Enlightenment Now from the Jacobin magazine denouncing Steven Pinker as a “false friend of the Enlightenment”; and this, just when I thought I could sit back and watch the march of progress from the comfort of my own home.  … More Steven Pinker: Friend or foe of the Enlightenment? ppe log#5 (renamed philosophy, politics, and economics log)

The Guru Letters

May 9, 2018

It was 1940, and the Democratic Convention was about to pick their presidential candidates. Paul Block, a Pittsburgh newspaper publisher, knew he had dynamite. The “guru” letters. They were strange letters written by Henry A. Wallace, currently FDR’s popular Secretary of Agriculture, and rumored to be his choice for VP in the upcoming presidential election. … More The Guru Letters